Hiiraan Online

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Separately, the group said it had captured five Kenyans crossing the border illegally and was interrogating them. In the town of Baidoa, witnesses said nearly 1,000 enraged locals took to the streets and threw stones at the militants in their rage against a ban on khat -- a mild stimulant whose leaves are chewed by most Somali men.

"We don't want the khat to be stopped, we don't want an al Shabaab administration," demonstrator Ali Mohamed told Reuters.

Al Shabaab, a pro-al Qaeda group which is battling the Somali government and African Union peacekeepers, overran Baidoa -- the former seat of parliament -- earlier this year to tighten its grip on large swathes of the south.

Fighters shot in the air to end the protest and detained about 50 people, locals said. They also demolished khat kiosks.

Somalis, who are traditionally moderate Muslims, say al Shabaab leaders normally bring security to areas under their control, but also impose hardline practices that many resent.

Hassan Derow, the local al Shabaab commander, told Reuters his gunmen were hunting other organisers of the demonstration.

"We will deal with residents with an iron fist," he said.

To the south, five Kenyans working for the Education Ministry were seized on the border by al Shabaab, locals said.

The hostages are a district education officer from Wajir, three school inspectors from Garissa and Mandera, and a driver.

THREAT TO PEACEKEEPERS

Kenyan police said the five had crossed the border and gone to the village of Bula Hawa in Somalia "for shopping."

"Police have sent two prominent local emissaries to secure the release of the five," a police statement said. "Everything possible is being done."

A local Shabaab spokesman, Abdiqani Abu Hamza, told Reuters: "We are interrogating them ... We don't know how they came in here, they might be drunk."

On a website it uses, al Shabaab urged Somalis to redouble attacks on a growing AU peacekeeping force in Mogadishu. The AU said this week Uganda had sent another battalion to Somalia. That would bring the mission to around 4,500 soldiers.

"We ask all Muslim brothers to continue fighting against the infidels flowing into our country," al Shabaab said, calling on fighters to "double attacks" on AU forces.

Al Shabaab is the main obstacle to a new government seeking to bring peace and central rule to the Horn of Africa nation, in the 15th such attempt during 18 years of civil conflict.

Osama bin Laden urged Somalis last week to topple their new president, Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, but analysts say most Somalis place more faith in the moderate Islamist than in al Qaeda.

The U.N. envoy to Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, told Reuters in Tanzania that despite al Shabaab's threat, there was cautious optimism Ahmed's government could make progress.

"Because the war has been fought for so long, the suffering is so long that people are crying for peace," the envoy said. "The government has to strengthen its base and simultaneously reach out to all Somalis."

Residents in the al Shabaab-controlled towns of Kismayu and Baidoa say foreign fighters -- east Africans, Arabs and Asians -- have arrived in recent weeks and now sport the popular green suit and black mask of al Shabaab. (Additional reporting by George Obulutsa in Zanzibar; Noor Ali in Garissa; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Mark Trevelyan)

Source: Reuters, March 25, 2009